2021

by Sagnik Bagchi and Surajit Bhattacharyya*
Mr. Modi’s advocacy of ‘Vikas’ to a great extent depends on India’s strategic importance in today’s interconnected world economy and the multifarious ways to increase participation in the “Globalized Production System”. Since occupying the topmost office of the world’s largest democracy, the Modi government has announced many trade reforms. The Foreign Trade Policy (2015-21) focuses extensively on export promotion schemes, production-linked (…)

by Bobby Ramakant and Sandeep Pandey *
Well-known Hindustani classical singer Padma Vibhushan Channulal Mishra, chosen as one of the proposers of Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha elections, lost his wife and elder daughter to Covid in private hospitals in Varanasi. Younger daughter has accused Medwin Hospital of charging Rs. 1.5 lakhs for treatement of her sister and not being able to explain the cause of death. Pandit Channulal Mishra has asked for a probe into his daughter’s death from the (…)

Obituary
by Prof. Ranbir Singh
Born in a peasant family in village Nahar of District Rewari on October 11, 1936, Dr. K. C. Yadav breathed his last due to cardiac arrest caused by COVID infection in Delhi on May 17, 2021. He could legitimately be deserved as the pioneer of Haryana History. His well known study, Revolt of 1857 in Haryana (Manohar, Delhi, 1968) has been recognized as a pioneer work in this context. Dr. Yadav also wrote three volumes of the History and culture of Haryana (…)

by Jeevesh Gupta*
Dwight D. Eisenhower, former U.S. President remarked “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” A city plan without planning remains a plan on paper which shall never add value to the lives of its citizenry.
An in depth analysis of The master plan of Delhi (MPD) 2041 draft brings out clearly that like MPD 2021, the DDA and the government has once again failed to develop a plan which promotes equality, inclusivity and social integration.
While MPD 2041 draft does (…)

MUSINGS
16 June 2016 Humra Quraishi
Last week as the veteran film star Dilip Kumar was hospitalised, I took out my notes on him and his wife, Saira Bano. I had met the couple just once and that too rather briefly in the lobby of a five-star hotel in New Delhi. But soon after that meet, I had interviewed Saira Bano for a national daily. This was in the summer of 1999, in the backdrop of the major controversy erupting, with Dilip Kumar receiving the Nishaan-e- Imtiaz award from the (…)

Reviewed by Shishir Reza
Agriculture of Bangladesh: Political Economy of Fixed Rent Leasing And Contract Farming
by Abul Barkat, GM Suhrawardy Publisher: Muktobuddhi Prokashona ISBN: 978-984-34-6629-7
In Bangladesh, agriculture is very important since it is the main livelihood of 80% people. People directly or indirectly depend on agriculture. Coastal areas constitute about 2.5 million hectares, which cover about 25% of the total crop land of the country. Nearly 0.84 million hectares (…)

‘Rogues among the Ruins’
by Achala Moulik
December 2021 | 312 pages
ISBN: 978-93-89136-69-2
Olive Turtle - Niyogi Books
The novel by Achala Moulik titled ‘Rogues among the Ruins’, Neogi Publishers, was debated recently at a book discussion at the IIC New Delhi. I was among the five discussants, including the distinguished author who explained why she wrote the novel. The discussion was stimulating.
The author was educated abroad and took a degree from the London University. She (…)

BOOK REVIEW
Reviewed by M R Narayan Swamy
Becoming
by Michelle Obama
published by Viking (an imprint of Penguin Books) ISBN-13:978-0241334140, Pages: 428; Price: Rs 999
Long before she moved into the opulent White House as the US First Lady, Michelle Obama’s family lived in the poor side of Chicago, one of the few who didn’t own a home. The lack of air-conditioning made the apartment unbearably hot in the afternoons. Michelle, her brother and their parents were packed into less (…)

Come ye Indians, you have a chance. Come to our wonderous land to breath and laugh, sing and dance. We were brought here by Ma Ganga. Here it is all changa! Truly changa!
Come ye Indians, young and old! Come to this Land of silver and gold. You don’t know it but you have become your own enemy, we are told. Internet poisoning has sickened your soul. All izz is not well. Not well.
Here we are having Good Times. Come and see. Come and see. And the best is yet to be.
The Supreme (…)

by Mustafa Khan
There is no limit to what the ire of state of India will go if literary pieces are sung and circulated. Literature reflects the actual life of the time in which it is enshrined in the poetic outburst. Poetry is the spontaneous expression of emotion, feeling and thought. The French revolution at the end of eighteenth century was a source of inspiration for freedom. The writers and poets of Romantic were so inspired they composed pomes. When the reign of terror came it (…)